A Very Special 4 Year Old

Magnolia turned 4 last Saturday, the 22nd.  We had a little birthday party for her at the South Bend Chocolate Cafe downtown with family and some of her friends from the neighborhood and from church.  It was a nice day and there was plenty to keep the kids busy between playing on the indoor playplace to having lunch to playing some more to having cake to playing a little bit more.

Here is the birthday girl pre-party.

 Magnolia and some friends playing inside the playplace.

 Caged animals or 4 year olds...or both...

 Boothie having fun with her Gramma Kath at the party.

 Blowing out 4 candles.  I can't believe this is the 4th time we have celebrated the birth of our beloved child.

 Time for presents!

 Lots of Strawberry Shortcake toys, their favorite right now.  That stuff has been played with non-stop this past week.

 Magnolia graciously let Boothe help her unwrap a lot of her gifts and didn't care one bit when Boothe began hoarding them in this bag which she titled "my bag".

 Raife slept almost the whole time, but when he did wake up...

 he was immediately smothered.  Ryan with the girls and mini-me (Raife).

 I did a mildly polka dot theme for the party.  Her dress, cake, balloons, wrapping paper and it just so happened that the room we rented had polka dots on the walls.

 We do a family picture at each birthday party.  Some of them turn out better than others.  This one reminds me of a bad passport photo...the white-ish background and bad lighting.

How blessed we have been these past 4 years.  We are constantly amazed at how smart you are and learn so much from your kind spirit.  We couldn't love you more, Magnolia!